10.0.0.0/8 address space with a gateway address that gets randomized every 24 hours. Tomorrow’s address is advertised on a HTTP server local to the network that cannot be externally accessed. For security reasons.
That’s the kind of overengineering I was hoping for!
Nothing advertises hostnames, and the DHCP table is dumped and every client gets new address at the same time, too.
Just make sure the MAC addresses randomize, too, and then you’ve got yourself a proper fucking mess for a hacker to sort out.
Throw in some random static DHCP leases that cycle every hour and update the firewall rule alias
the honeypot house of mirrors
I use 10.13.37.42 as my gateway.
Sigh why on earth did I not do 10.13.37.0/24?? Mine is lame as hell
Why not 10.69.42.01?
I have never found the number 69 joke/reference funny, just annoying.
You are very welcome to use that IP adress yourself, but I am going to stick to 10.13.37.42
Gateway is .69
Dhcp is .70 - .254
Static routes are .68 and below
I will not be taking any questions
The “gateway” is 69. Noted
No no no, the period comes first, .69
Gotta get your red wings.
I understood that reference…
Also, I’ve got those. 😏
About twenty years ago I was hired in to straighten up a network at a investment place. They were running all static IP addresses and the guy who set it up set the gateway to 69. I laughed and started converting them to dhcp and seriously considered leaving the gateway alone.
I have to ask a question now. My question is, is that you?
It wasn’t me. Why leave room for DHCP if you’re not going to use it?
Gateway has multiple IP addresses, from .1 through .10 . (I used to have multiple OpenWRT servers for different things, but consolidated them all into a single rackmount server.)
Last address? Who the heck does that???
I’ve had modems from my ISP which assigned themselves 192.168.0.254 for some reason. I have no idea why
My guess is that enough people were buying routers and using them as access points. They all tend to be on 192.168.0.1 .254 means you don’t get as bad collisions when that happens. It would cut down on technical support calls.
My new fibre modem is .254. It was a bitch to get into (whatever the mode’s called that makes it a simple gateway).
Bridge mode?
It’s called
multicastedit: broadcast and it’s for spamming every device on the network /sIt’s called multicast
Don’t confuse the broadcast address with multicast!
hey, don’t you blame multicast for the sins of others! Multicast and Anycast are under witness protection!
10.10.0.254 here, because I wanted my main rig to be .1
Use .0, it’s free real estate.
I work for a French company that does this, I don’t know if all French companies do this, but it threw me for a loop for sure.
There are reasons to put it at the end. For example, 192.168.1.254/24 can be expanded to /23 and have the same gateway address while you migrate clients that are statically assigned or while waiting on DHCP leases to expire, since /23 is a supernet of /24.
What am I missing here?
192.168.1.1/24 would also be a valid gateway for a /23, with the benefit of not having a gateway in the middle of your /23 network?
I feel like this example is a greater justification for putting the gateway on the network/CIDR + 1, like a civilized person.
I shared another post here with how subnetting works. Basically, if you start with 192.168.1.254 on a /24 for your gateway and move to a /23, your usable range goes from 192.168.1.1-192.168.1.254 to 192.168.0.1-192.168.1.254.
In this situation, the gateway address stays the same and since the /24 is contained within the /23, they can still connect to the gateway and keep working while you migrate things. The only thing they cannot talk to is clients in the 192.168.0.0/24 space until they pull new DHCP or have their static address updated. As such, it can make future expansion easier, if necessary.
If you used 192.168.1.1/24 as the gateway initially, you’ll notice that in this same expansion plan it’s now smack in the middle of the subnet in a /23. Is that the end of the world? No, but it looks like shit and complicates things if you did something like I usually do and allocate certain “sections” of the subnet to non-DHCP space. Also, now you need to manage two DHCP pools, one below 192.168.1.1 and one above it. It’s one of those small things that compounds with each bandaid until you’re dying by a thousand cuts.
I’m theory you would design your network with a large enough subnet from the get-go for expansion, but sometimes you screw up, so habits like this can make those screw ups less painful.
Bleh, gotchu, I was getting the bit boundary wrong (192.168.0.0/24 > 192.168.0.0/23; NOT 192.168.1.0. that’s not how bits work)
A typical ip address scheme is to assign lower blocks to dhcp pools and reserve high ip addresses to servers and network gear. Anything over 250 is typically a switch or a router in this case.
There’s nothing preventing the gateway from being a DHCP client, just saying…
oh my god
i love this idea so much. I’ve been doing networking for 13 years now and I’ve never considered a dynamically addressed gateway
At first I didn’t understand then I read your comment… oh, my, god!
also servers
Settle down, Satan.
your home router is a DHCP client of your ISP’s DHCP server, so…yea.
deleted by creator
Meanwhile my gateway is
fe80::17a9:3ba7:5¥4🐔:b8ä7%42Wait is there an existing unicode to ipv6 method. I assume it would just be the bit values of the emoji in utf8?
fe80::“hello 🐔” aka fe80::6865:6c6c:6f20:f09f:9094
I approve of the idea of cursed ipv6 notation.
That would be a funny way to avoid DNS, just make the address the name.
I was joking, but it would be cool if each segment could be rendered as a UTF-8 glyphs.
sup
R U local?
I’ll be everywhere…wherever you look. Wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad…I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready. And when our folks eat the stuff they raise and live in the houses they build…I’ll be there.
I used to use 1.2.3.4 as my gateway.
At the time I didn’t understand why this offended … Basically everybody.
As a Network Engineer: If you did this in my presence, I’d burn you at the goddamn stake. 😂
Like I said … Basically everybody.
That’s mostly because it violates established standards, but you know that already. Lol.
Also, if you’re talking to a network engineer, they probably have PTSD dealing with a client that did this with a 1.0.0.0/8 used internally or some shit and now huge swathes of the internet doesn’t work, but somehow it’s “our fault” that they can’t load random web sites.
Fwiw, I now use 10.10.220.0/24. I now know what class A, B and C are. I didn’t then.
Hopefully that offers you some comfort.
Everyone knows you need to be using a network like fd25:c74c:a5e9::/64. So much more fun that way.

I’m sure this is hilarious, but I don’t know enough about IPv6 to get it.
It’s just a ‘proper’ IPv6 private address, the IPv6 equivalent of ‘10.’.
I say proper as a private address in ipv6 is supposed to be fd, then 40 random bits, then whatever you want. Nothing stops you from having fd::/64 as your private network though. The thinking was people who got tired of merging networks that happened to choose the same 10.x.x.x scheme and/or vpn connecting to multiple sites similarly with the same private address. So they thought it would be swell if every private network on earth would likely be unique, so they said you ‘must’ randomize 5 bytes of it. Then no renumbering/no conflicting vpn connections.
Haha all good homie.
Thankfully, the internet is now as classless as I am. I don’t miss having to align to those.
That’s mostly because it violates established standards, but you know that already. Lol.
Hey, for all you know he might actually be the proper owner of that subnet…
I know if by some crazy coincedence I had that in my subnet I’d be using it for fun.
I recently had a ticket for a university that had a /12 of public IPs. They gave every computer, printer, etc. a public IP on their whole network. Nothing has NAT. It was insane. They could buy an entire other university building with the money they’d make selling some of that address space down to even a /24.

RIP
I love that people forget about 127.0.0.0/8 being the loopback network. Everyone just uses .1 when there are so many to choose from.
IPv6: Fuck you, you’re only allowed one, now. Yeah, yeah, I know there are about 340 undecillion addresses in the space, but I know better than you, no one in history has ever needed to bind different services to the same port on the loopback interface, and if they did they were doing it wrong. Oh you made an RFC draft? Well I let the one from
20152012 expire, so good luck with your current proposal, pleb.Can’t you just use a ULA address for that?
So the onus is on every individual user, to pick a random ULA prefix, bind specific addresses from it to the loopback interface, which is a different procedure for different OSes, probably requires root or elevated privileges, can have hard limits on, document it, etc. Greeeeaaaaaaat design. IPv6 gives out
/64like they’re about to turn bad, but can’t spare a/104? Gimme a break.I can dig a hole with a spoon, too, but if someone made it so that no one was allowed to dig holes with shovels unless they build their own (and have permission to build the shovel), when previously everyone was allowed to dig with shovels, I would not think highly of that person’s wisdom.
Maybe you think G. Huston of APNIC and W. Kumari of Google don’t really know what they’re talking about?
I don’t bother with ULA addresses on my home network and just use the public /56 I have broken into various /64s for each VLAN I have. In a corporate environment, I might use ULA addresses, but since IPv6 is “everything is public by design” and an Enterprise will have a static IPv6 block, if they did it right, it’s not like it’ll change. And for anything that doesn’t need internet, link-local is a thing.
IPv6 isn’t perfect, but I find myself liking it more and more as time goes on. Some of it is habits. Some of it is that I tire of dealing with things like CGNAT and SIP.
Link-local was made for same segment networking made easy
IPv6 link-local: For when you just can’t be bothered to address a damn thing 😂
People also commonly do not know that the reserved for intranet ip address range of 192.168.0.0 is actually /16 so you can pick any number between 0 and 255 for that 3rd byte and have their whole network in a range other that 192.168.0.0/8 like pretty much everybody else.
I have had to deal with a lot of companies where they did the opposite, acted like 192 was a /8 and did stuff way out of the private range.
According ding the the law of minimal keystrokes, there’s actually only 9 to choose from.
After applying the law of minimal motion, you’re down to even fewer.
Then you go a step further to just using 127.1 (or your preferred last digit)
My home server is at 192.168.1.230 because that’s what IP was assigned to the machine at the moment I set it up.
Yep. Love that chaos, ya know?
Lol mine is .116 for the same reason
DHCP gave me 170. I said “let’s make this static shall we?”
Lol, same-ish, lazy gang ftw.
There are dozens of us
Back before i knew anything about networking and set my desktops with statics, i had .1-9 as user devices, .10-19 as servers, .20-29 as printers, .50-59 as networking devices. So my current server is .14 and has been that since uni, DNS is .50, gateway is .51. Now my dhcp pool starts at 100.
First address? As in, the network address? Last address? As in, the broadcast address? Suspicious.
This guy networks
*First Usable Address. Obviously u can drop the usable part.
0.0.0.0 is usable, not routable, but still very usable
/31, looking shady since 3021
Subnet: 10/8
Gateway: 10.2.5.5Thanks. I hate it.
Nah, put your gateway in a different subnet, but on the same network segment, and add a static /32 route to it on every client.
Is there a specific reason behind this? Never considered it but I could see it being useful since most specific routes win.
Mostly to make the next sysadmin (or yourself in 6 months) weep. There’s nothing preventing there being multiple IP subnets on a single network segment, but you’d usually handle that with separate VLANs, or at least an interface alias, so the machine saw both subnets. About the only reason I could see for just adding a static route would be if you’re in the middle of reconfiguring your network to a new subnet but you still need the hosts you haven’t updated to be able to route.
The real nightmare when someone puts two ip addresses on the same host through different interfaces. Now that makes for some confusing troubleshooting and explanations in various applications.
What really gets me is in about 3/4 networks in the last couple of weeks I’ve been asked to help troubleshoot, the problem has been duplicate IP addresses. I don’t know what is going on with people…
That won’t work, unless I’m misunderstanding you. You’d still need a gateway within your subnet to handle inter-subnet routing or an additional address on the gateway network.
It can be made to work, just really really stupid.
Ultimately the ‘gateway’ is really a mac address, and the IP is just the thing to ARP to get the mac address. And you can do some gnarly things to pull off things like off-subnet gateway addresses.
You should never ever do it, but you can if you hate yourself enough.
Becomes easier in IPv6 to do these shenigans too.
Technically, sure, but you have to do a ton of fuckery and I have no idea why anybody would do all that work rather than just use an IP in the subnet.
By adding a host, or /32, route to the gateway you should then be able to use it as the default gateway on your main subnet. I was not being serious when I suggested it, as another comment says, it’s a pretty stupid idea, and there really isn’t any sane usecase for it, except possibly one of those 1am “if it’s stupid but it works it’s still stupid, but it’ll do until morning” type fixes that you shudder to recall years later.
Also change the random address daily without announcing it. If the 7th floor wants internet they can damn well work for it. 😆
10.10.10.70 here. There was a reason in the distant past that I did this and now it’s stuck that way forever.
.254
Anything else is mental illness. .1 is sus but acceptable in a pinch. But why cut into the DHCP pool like that. 1-100 is DHCP, obviously.
My DHCP is 100-something I dont remember because I don’t care about or respect the devices using DHCP.
As God intended. If you’re important in any context, you have a static IP. Otherwise you’re a second or third class device.
Gonna use 10.233.212.254 on my 10.233.212.0/23 👍
There are no windows in your house.
https://vlipsy.com/clips/dr-tran-there-are-no-windows-in-your-house-aoFRHS2T
I never run into Dr.Tran in the wild and it’s a shame. More people need to support red blooded American secret agents that also have a doctorate
Buttery what!? Smoked what!? So crazy!
My soho setup is:
1-100 = DHCP
101 = Default gateway
102 - 199 = Unused
201-254 = Static, manually assigned IPs (if any)
I came up with it before I got my Net+. I told myself I’d change it as soon as it caused any problems. That was 12 years ago.
I use the low numbers for statics, less to remember/communicate if its a 1/2 digit number instead of 3.
I’m stealing this config, I love it.
Mine is 1 for router/gateway, 2-199 is static with 2-9 (technically 1-9) being network gear, 10-19 being servers/related, 20-29 computers, 30-39 phones… all the way up to 100-119 for cameras and access, currently. And then 200+ for dhcp.
Everything on the network runs dhcp but gets a static ip from the router. If I ever forget to assign a new device, it’s obvious since it won’t be near the related equipment, and it’ll be like 213 or something, sticking out like a sore thumb.
.1 gateway .2-.99 static range .100-.254 dynamic range (dhcp)
btw. /23 networks are cool, too.
yes to /23. Lower 24 is all static. Upper 24 is all DHCP. And the GW lives right in the middle at .1
DHCP first is unhinged bruh
1-127 is static, DHCP starts at 128.
Libvirt/QEMU agrees with me so I must be right
I set the gateway to .1 and everything up to 100 I move out of DHCP into static pool for some nodes (speakers, servers, gateways, SIP phones, access points, switches, printers, vacuum cleaners, etc.). Simply because in this case, you have to type fewer digits to log into these boxes.
Why not 255?
255 is reserved for broadcast.
Edit: Yes, 255 is technically not ‘reserved’ by itself. I was only thinking about the addresses scoped to /24 for a simple answer. A broadcast address is reserved, though.
When in doubt: https://www.calculator.net/ip-subnet-calculator.html
10.233.213.255 is broadcast, 10.233.212.255 is a usable address …
How big of an IP scope do you use at home?
Do you really need something larger than a /24?
I’m quite fond of 10.0.0.0/8. That gives you a lot of wiggle room, just in case.
Just a little bit of wiggle room…
It’s useful to keep the 16 million IoT devices you have running on WiFi segregated a bit.
Well technically a 10. network could be a /8 if you really wanted to. But in this case the /23 was specified above. I don’t think it’s necessary but that’s what op was talking about and the 212.255 is a valid address, as is 213.0
Sure, you could. But you’d be going out of your way to setup an internal IP scope you’ll never fully utilize.
I suppose it doesn’t really matter, but it just feels wrong.
Thanks for the correction on the the broadcast address, btw. The details are important.
At home, I have 172.16/12 scoped out for my cluster subnet and just use the second and third octet to denote service function. It’s excessive scoping, but it’s an internal scope for a private network and broadcasts are generally contained to the cluster network. It would be trivial to split that into a 172.16/16 if I ever had the desire. (Speaking bluntly, it really doesn’t matter much in this case. I’ll need to split it out to keep Longhorn traffic segregated later, but it’s not an issue now.)
The rest of the network is reasonably scoped out across 192.168 ranges and chopped up across a few VLANs.
My addressing scheme is split into “public” and “stay the fuck out”, with most 172 addresses being the latter. At home this is great. In a large network, scoping out such a large 172 subnet could be detrimental. (“It depends” on the detrimental bit and requires proper planning and understanding about why subnets were even built into IPv4 from the get-go.)
Edit: Most addressing is static on my cluster network, with DHCP only handing out addresses based on MAC address. The 172 subnet has very restricted dynamic IP ranges.
Regardless of what is what, it’s a scheme I recognize and that is the more important bit.
It might also make you really grumpy if you decide to use a VPN or containers - those often use 10/24 subnets and having an overlap with your LAN can make things spicy.
Yeah that’s fair. Maybe OP is planning a nonsense amount of IoT devices and cameras? or they just want to use some unorthodox IPs like .255 or .0 for fun 🤷
I could see something like /20 being useful not so much for the number of addresses but to group things by use case, then /8 because you don’t care and it doesn’t matter. Also 10.0 is quicker to type and cleaner to look at than 192.168
The highest address of a subnet is the broadcast address. You can’t assign it to a host.
But 10.233.212.225 is middle of the range for the /23.
I had students like you when teaching Cisco classes…
Their peers heads would always explode, lol.
If you use a /23 you can use the middle .0 too.
My favourite dumb networking trick though is that Linux lets you use an IPv6 address as an IPv4 gateway.
ip -4 route add default via inet6 fe80::1 dev eth0That works so long as the gateway is running dual stack.
Makes sense, the gateway is never a target of the ip packet, so it’s really only used to find the MAC address of the gateway.
It makes sense if you think about it, but seeing IPv6 addresses in the IPv4 routing table still makes professional network engineers stop and boggle for a moment
Thanks I hate it.
But why can’t I use IPX in my routing table for IPv4???



















